Edit: This post is old and a lot of links/images are broken. I'll post most recent content up here: YouTube video from TA TA article: http://toucharcade.com/2009/06/04/e3-early-gameplay-video-of-scifly-2/ Screenshots: Edit: Original post: This is totally random, but I had another one of those development moments where I was like "wow, that looks awesome...", so I wanted to share a screenshot just for fun. I've been working on the aircraft's paint material material since I got back from GDC. I've always wanted it to look like a sports car, but I don't think I had it quite right until (perhaps) now. I decided to pick a photo of a red Ferarri and try as hard as I could to replicate its paint. On gaming console hardware, this is possible using all sorts of dynamic reflections and such. These abilities are not available on the iPhone yet, so shiny materials are not too easy to implement. Okay. So, this is the photo of the Ferarri I was using as a reference: And this is SciFly II And, just for comparison, this is what the original SciFly looked like: I would love to hear your opinions on how it looks to you. Does it look final-product worthy, or should I keep working on it?
Amazing job on the plane. It definately looks ready to me. Especially when compared to the SciFly original. Again very nice job on the lighting and coloring.
The plane itself looks great, but imho, it doesn't connect well with the cartoony environment. You must have 1 overall style to unite everything in the game, from the planes, environment, terrain and interface. Would it be cartoony like Clusterball, or realistically glossy like Fastlane, or dark robotic like Transformers posters with less vibrant colours and more moody colour palette? Huge improvement over the previous one though, huge.
Pretty much agree with the two posts above, me personally I would take a crappy lookin ship and prefer more interesting and better looking enviroments. And the plane is a lil too shiny as it is.
oh man this looks great! I love the blue and green world you've created there, islands are great!! Remember Clusterball? That turquoise water and landscape would have been great to fly around in, and this looks pretty good!
I really hate to say that it really is a bit too shiny x.x Maybe less shiny, and more shiny in the environment? Then there'll be shiny everywhere! Shiiiinnnyyyyy ._.
please tell me that there is auto-locking onto targets in this version, because I found the original impossible to play because i could never aim on the targets. the screenshot looks very nice though.
The plane looks... 100 x great! I am sure i will buy the game when it's out. (Will it be released soon ?) But the enviroment doesen't look that good. (The land looks bad, The see is good)
Plane looks too shiny, almost like a plastic toy. The environments could use some sprucing up. I'd go with better quality textures for the land, and maybe use some of that "shiny" on the water. BTW, I had no problem with the dogfights in the original SciFly. Especially since the last update.
great a few more aditions like more levels and bether interface could be made(sorry but the the previous interface was/and still is verry crapy)a nice adition could be to integrate the old planes and buy aditional upgrades(different sorts of rockets,... and maybe armour options.but these are just sugestions. new modes like survival or mission would also make a great adittion to the the game thanks for reading i hope this reply was/is verry helpfull
Wow, thanks for the great feedback! So, some definitely like it, but others have issues with it being too shiny and the world looking to basic. Terrain I didn't realize that the terrain stood out as being basic, so I'm glad to hear that. Makes sense actually, I've spent way more hours working on the artwork for the aircraft than I did on the planes. I'll try to come back with something better, terrain wise, sometime soon. Shininess For the shininess, I'll just have to continue tweaking it, but it's difficult because some say it looks, others not so much. At one point it might just be a matter of opinion, since technically it's not "realistic." Controls There will definitely be auto-locking on missile based weapons. Currently, I don't plan to have auto-aiming on projectile weapons. But here's the thing... Most of the targets now will be turrets and slow moving battleships. Enemy aircraft are sorta the "elite" enemies. Turrets and such will be much easier to aim at, and the enemy aircraft wont appear until later in the game (when you're more use to the controls). I'm also spending a lot of time working on the general control scheme, so hopefully those changes will help out. PM me if you would like to beta-test the game whenever the beta comes out. For general info on SciFly II, here's STP's initial coverage. http://www.slidetoplay.com/story/scifly-ii-first-look Sweet, well thanks again for the great input!
Will the shine on the plane correllate with the position of the sun, as is demonstrated in Freeverse's Top Gun preview video. Will the top be in the shade when turned away from the sun?
Well the shine is created using a specular highlights overlay. To my knowledge, TopGun does not do this. The darkening and lighting depending on the direction of the plane relative to the sun is standard diffuse lighting. The original SciFly did this as well; when you fly upside down, the top of the ship will become darker. However, the texture quality of TopGun is much better than the original SciFly, which is why it looks very good. In SciFly II, I'm taking a very different approach. On the aircraft, I've almost removed the use of basic textures entirely. Without any lighting, the aircraft would actually be perfectly solid blocks of color. This would look terrible if only diffuse and ambient lighting was used. However, with the addition of specular highlight, a very unique look can be achieved. This is important when trying to model a material that resembles a sports car. Compare a standard material, like a brick wall, to a sports car and you'll see what I mean. A brick wall can be easily simulated by overlaying a photograph of a wall from real life. Lighting does not have very much affect on this, other than tinting and shading. A Ferrari, on the other hand, is very different. It's impossible to simulate a Ferrari's paint job using only a texture. The look of a Ferrari is almost entirely derived from specular lighting, not texture. The paint is all just a solid color, it doesn't have any of the detail that a brick wall would have. An F22 has considerably more texture than a Ferrari: Heheh well I doubt very many want to spend the time to read all that, so I'll stop there
Wow, it looks great and, yes, rall, itit is very shiny. Although I agree with many, that the environment could be improved just a little. Overall it looks like a big improvement from the first SciFly.
